Party warned of twin threat 'complacency'

The Liberal Democrats are suffering from "huge complacency" about the likely squeeze their party faces at the next election from Labour and the Conservatives, Sue Doughty, the defeated Lib Dem MP for Guildford told a Guardian fringe meeting yesterday. She said her party tried to exploit tactical voting, but "sometimes we are the victims".

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell's chief of staff, admitted the party needed to sharpen its campaigning, conceding that "the Tories outcampaigned us in our target seats so we have a task in upgrading our campaigning". Julia Goldsworthy, the shadow chief secretary and MP for Falmouth, said the party need to rethink its electoral strategy, adding that the "decapitation strategy" deployed at the last election aimed at claiming the scalps of high-profile Tory MPs was "naive". But the overall mood of the party at the Guardian debate was upbeat.

Mr Lamb insisted the party was enjoying what he described as "creeping credibility" as it established footholds in more areas of Britain, allowing it to develop clusters of seats. He went on to point out that few would have expected the party to enter the conference season with 21% in the polls, given the leadership crisis surrounding Charles Kennedy.

He also claimed that by putting green taxation and climate change at the heart of its appeal to the country, it was possible to attract a disenfranchised younger generation of voters.